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Cream Versailles
Put one teacupful of sugar into a saucepan on the fire, and stir gently until it is of a light brown color. Put in two tablespoonfuls of water, stir for a minute and mix in one quart of milk. Add one-half teaspoonful of salt beaten up with seven or eight eggs and one half-teaspoonful of vanilla extract; turn the whole into a charlotte-mould after buttering it lightly, set it in a pan of warm water and bake in a moderate oven for forty minutes. Push a knife down the center to test it, and if the custard is not milky it is done. Place it in a cool place, let it remain until quite cold, turn it out onto a dish, and serve with caramel sauce poured over it.
This is a baked caramel custard — what a French kitchen would call crème renversée au caramel — and it is straightforward once the old measures and vessels are translated.
- The hinge: gentle heat, water bathA custard of this richness sets between 170 and 175F; past that the eggs curdle and weep. The pan of warm water is not optional, and the oven should never be allowed to bring that water to a simmer.
- TeacupfulTeacup measures of the period varied, and were reckoned anywhere from about 4 to 8 fl oz; taken at about 6 fl oz this is roughly 3/4 cup of sugar, about 5 1/4 oz by weight. A scant cup will not hurt the recipe.
- Moderate oven350F. If the custard is browning or the water is bubbling, drop to 325F.
- Charlotte mouldA plain, straight-sided tin holding about 2 quarts, slightly tapered so the custard turns out. A soufflé dish, a deep cake tin or a 2-quart pudding basin all stand in. Butter it very lightly — too much and the caramel sauce slides off the unmoulded surface.
- TimingForty minutes suits a shallow mould. A deep 2-quart charlotte will more likely take 55 to 70 minutes. Test as directed, or read 170F at the center with a thermometer.
- Making the caramelThis is a dry caramel: sugar alone in the pan until light brown. The two tablespoons of water will spit violently when they hit it, so add them off the heat with the pan held away from you. Warm the milk before it goes in and any hardened caramel will dissolve faster.
- EggsSeven or eight eggs to a quart of milk gives a firm custard that will stand when turned out. Period eggs were not standardised and generally ran smaller than modern large eggs, so eight is the safer count.
- Cooling and unmouldingIt must be thoroughly cold — several hours, ideally overnight — before it will release cleanly. Run a thin knife around the edge and invert onto a chilled dish.
- YieldEight to ten servings. The caramel sauce is a separate preparation; a plain caramel thinned with cream or water is what is meant.
Oscar Tschirky's 1896 collection is a French professional repertoire written down for American households, and this dish is a plain crème renversée under a grander name. Hotel and restaurant cooking of the late nineteenth century routinely attached place-names — Versailles, Metternich, Richelieu, Waldorf — to standard preparations to distinguish one house's version from another's, and the label often carries no more meaning than that. What the recipe does show is the period's confidence with caramel: sugar taken dry to a light brown, slaked with water, and carried through a quart of milk, a technique that puts the burnt-sugar flavor into the custard itself rather than leaving it as a pool at the bottom of the mould. The finished dish is then sauced with more caramel, which is the sort of doubling a hotel kitchen could afford and a home cook of the day would have read as luxurious.